In an admission sure to reverberate from New York to Boston, renowned art critic Robert Hughes has acknowledged that his Nov. 2 Time magazine article borrowed a passage from a review written by the wife of one of Boston University's top academics.

Patricia Macdonald's July review of an exhibition, "New Worlds From Old: 19th Century Australian and American Landscape Painting," was published by the Australian Art Collector. Macdonald, a lecturer who has worked in the art auction world, is married to BU Journalism Department chairman Ranald Macdonald.

"All I can say is that to my great regret, I seem to have regurgitated" the opening of Macdonald's review, Hughes said yesterday. "It was a completely unconscious affair. I read all the clippings from the show. . . . Frankly, I don't see this as a federal case of plagiarism."

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